'It's a money game now'-How LSU is using NIL to keep up in ever-evolving college football

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Days before Thanksgiving, perhaps hours after quarterback recruit Bryce Underwood’s stunning decision to shift his commitment from LSU to Michigan, a 50-year-old private equity executive in San Francisco worth billions fielded a phone call from someone in South Louisiana.

“Holden,” the voice on the other side said, “Can you help?”

Every fundraising effort has to start somewhere.

This one, in particular, began with Holden Spaht, a Harvard Business School graduate, Baton Rouge native and a mostly unknown figure who has worked in the shadows for years, with a small handful of others, to fund LSU NIL efforts.

In late November, the Tigers saddled with a third straight season of at least three losses, their five-star quarterback commitment jettisoned for more cash and their football NIL fund below many SEC peers, coach Brian Kelly and administrators orchestrated a fundraising effort intended to aggressively pursue transfers and retain top players.

In less than two weeks last December, they needed to raise at least half of their springtime NIL goal of $13 million, which, in itself, was an already lofty objective given a startling fact: Despite its reputation as an NIL juggernaut — featuring stars of authentic endorsement deals like gymnast Livvy Dunne and women’s basketball player Angel Reese — the football program’s booster-backed NIL collective budget trailed many within its own conference.

LSU’s collective spent roughly $12 million on its football roster over the last three seasons — combined. For comparison’s sake, the Ole Miss collective spent about $13 million on its roster — last season.

Even athletic director Scott Woodward acknowledges that the program wasn’t “at the top of the heap early on.” But this winter, a sea change happened here on the bayou.

A program whose coach only last May announced at a news conference that he wasn’t “in the market of buying players” mobilized like never before. The fundraising blitzkrieg, starting with that phone call out West, featured presentations to donors of the program’s new, NFL-like roster valuation system. Kelly, himself, made visits to Baton Rouge offices of business owners and pledged to match up to $1 million in LSU NIL contributions with a donation to the school’s athletics fund.

The result? Multiple seven-figure gifts arrived. It was a last gasp to cap off the industry’s four-year NIL era of boosters funding rosters before the arrival in July of a revenue-sharing concept that permits schools to directly pay players.

“We’ve contributed donations because I have felt, to be honest with you, that there will be change,” said Pepper Rutland, who gave a seven-figure gift for the portal push. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see major college football leave the NCAA, and I’m afraid if you don’t do this and stay in the mix, you may be irrelevant when that change happens. You may be a school that doesn’t come back from it.

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